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BEYOND THE BREXIT DEBATE

Whatever the result of the Brexit referendum on Thursday, of one thing we can be sure: Britain will neither be invaded by marauding Turks, as anti-EU campaigners suggest might happen if the country votes ‘Yes’, nor will Western civilization collapse, as EU president Donald Tusk fears after a ‘No’ vote. There will undoubtedly be economic and political turbulence, but Britain will not be staring into the abyss, however it votes.

But, if the world will not end for Britain, neither will the key issues at the heart of the Brexit debate have been resolved – or even properly addressed. Hostility to the EU, not just in Britain, but throughout Europe, has been driven by frustrations about democracy and resentment about immigration. The Remain (pro-EU) campaign, recognizing that it has few answers, has largely avoided both issues, focusing almost entirely on economic arguments. Leave (anti-EU) campaigners have been equally opportunistic in the way they have addressed questions of democracy and immigration.

Many EU supporters dismiss the charge that the EU is undemocratic, pointing to the existence of the European parliament whose members are elected by all EU citizens. This is not only to overstate the influence of MEPs on policy making, it is also to miss the point about popular resentment. The reason that people see the EU as undemocratic is not because they don’t think they can vote in EU elections. It is because they feel that despite their vote, they have little say in the major decisions that shape their lives.

Any Parliament has to represent a particular demos. There is, though, no European demos. The EU is an attempt to create a demos from top down, where none exists from bottom up. That is why people feel little sense of the European Parliament as representative, and resent the bureaucratic process through which policy is made.

Other EU supporters argue that without such an elitist project it would be impossible to respond effectively to major crises such as climate change or global recession. This at least has the merit being honest in accepting that the value of the EU lies in its ability to bypass democratic process in the name of the greater good.

The trouble is, whenever the EU has faced a major crisis, it has not only failed to respond in a coherent fashion, but its eventual incoherent response has rarely enhanced the common good. During the Eurozone crisis, the EU prevaricated for months, before undercutting democracy in Greece through the imposition of the ‘troika’, comprising the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF, which effectively took control of economic and social policy, and enforced an eye-watering austerity programme, including slashing pensions, cutting wages, raising taxes, laying off workers and privatising swathes of the economy, the aim of which was to bail out not Greece but the European banks that had lent to Greece.

Or consider the migration crisis. After months of political paralysis, the EU eventually responded – by absolving itself of responsibility. It stitched together a series of deals with non-EU countries such as Turkey, Sudan, Jordan and Niger, promising them huge sums of money for detaining potential migrants to the EU. Sickened by the immorality of these deals, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières last week refused all EU funding, observing that it could not take money ‘from institutions and governments whose policies do so much harm’.

The EU’s consistent failure in the face of such crises is not because it is shackled by the democratic process, as some suggest, but because it lacks a democratic mandate for its decisions, and so is often politically paralyzed.

But while the EU is a fundamentally undemocratic institution, leaving the EU would not, in itself, bridge the democratic deficit. There exists today a much more profound disenchantment with mainstream political institutions, a disenchantment that is evident at national, as well as at European, level and which, throughout Europe, has led to an upsurge in support for populist parties.

The background to this disenchantment is the narrowing of the ideological divides that once characterized politics. Politics has become more about technocratic management than social transformation. One way in which people have felt this change is as a crisis of political representation, as a growing sense of being denied a voice, and of political institutions as being remote and corrupt. The sense of being politically abandoned has been most acute within the traditional working class, whose feelings of isolation have increased as social democratic parties have cut their links with their old constituencies. As mainstream parties have discarded both their ideological attachments and their long-established constituencies, so the public has become increasingly disengaged from the political process. The gap between voters and the elite has widened, fostering disenchantment with the very idea of politics. The EU has come to be an institutional embodiment of this new political landscape.

The main political faultline, throughout Europe today, is not between left and right, between social democracy and conservatism, but between those who feel at home in – or at least are willing to accommodate themselves to – the new globalised, technocratic world, and those who feel left out, dispossessed and voiceless. These kinds of divisions have always existed, of course. In the past, however, that sense of dispossession and voicelessness could be expressed politically, particularly through the organizations of the left and of the labour movement. No longer. It is the erosion of such mechanisms that is leading to the remaking of Europe’s political landscape.

Brexit may restore a greater degree of sovereignty, but it will not address this deeper anger. In conflating resentment about lack of democracy with restraints on national sovereignty, Leave campaigners obscure the real problems. The dangers of such conflation can be seen most clearly in the debate about immigration. Leave campaigners argue that outside the EU, Britain would have control of its borders, and so be able to allay people’s fear about immigrants. ‘You can only spike the guns of the extremists and the people who are genuinely anti-immigrant’, Boris Johnson suggested, ‘if you take back control.’

But you couldn’t, even then. For a start, even where Britain has complete control of its immigration policy, it has been unable to reduce the flow as it would wish. Migration to Britain from outside the EU was higher last year than EU migration (and has been throughout this century). EU net migration currently stands at 184,000 compared to 188,000 from outside the EU. Having promised to reduce migration to the ‘tens of thousands’, and being unable to limit EU migrants, the government has striven particularly hard to reduce non-EU numbers, including adopting the kind of ‘points-based system’ favoured by critics of high immigration. Its continued failure to reduce numbers is telling, showing that unless the government wishes truly to harm the economy, its control of migration is limited. Promising to limit immigration and failing to do so will, as the government has already demonstrated, only aggravate, not alleviate, hostility to immigration.

Nor should we confuse open borders with a lack of national sovereignty. Consider the case of Spain and the EU. Until 1991, Spain had an open border with North Africa. Migrant workers would come to Spain for seasonal work and then return home. In 1986, the newly democratic Spain joined the EU. As part of its obligations as a EU member, it had to close its North African borders. The closing of the borders did not stop migrant workers trying to enter Spain. Instead, they took to small boats to cross the Mediterranean and smuggle themselves in. This was the start of the ‘migration crisis’.

Spain had exercised national sovereignty by keeping its borders open. Closed borders were imposed by Brussels.

The real issue is not control of borders but having a democratic mandate for any immigration policy. There is no iron law that the public must be irrevocably hostile to immigration. Large sections of the public have become hostile because they have come to associate immigration with unacceptable change. And yet, while immigration has become the most potent symbol of a world out of control, and of ordinary people having little say in the policies that affect their lives, it is not the reason for the social and political grievances that many have to endure.

Economic and social changes – the decline of manufacturing industry, the crumbling of the welfare state, the coming of austerity, the atomization of society, the growth of inequality – have combined with political shifts , such as the erosion of trade union power and the transformation of social democratic parties, to create in sections of the electorate a sense of rage.

Remain campaigners warn of the ‘uncertainties’ that would be created by Britain leaving the EU. What they fail to recognize is that for many sections of the electorate, ‘uncertainty’ is what they feel now, and it is this that is driving their hostility to mainstream political institutions and to the EU.

Immigration has played almost no part in fostering these changes. It has, however, come to be the means through which many perceive these changes, largely because of the way that the immigration issue has been framed by politicians of all hues over the past half century. On the one hand, politicians have recognised a need for immigration. On the other hand, they have promoted the idea of immigration as a fundamental social problem. At the same time, politicians often express disdain for the masses whom many regard as deeply racist, and incapable of adopting a rational view of immigration. Labour leader, and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown’s description during the 2010 election campaign of pensioner Gillian Duffy as ‘a bigoted woman’ because of her worries about east European migrants captured the contempt of elite politicians for the little people’s immigration concerns. This poisonous mixture of necessity, fear and contempt has helped both to stigmatize migrants and to create popular hostility towards the liberal elite for ignoring their views on immigration.

The EU might favour freedom of movement within its borders but the quid pro quo for such freedom has been the creation of a Fortress Europe, a citadel against immigration, watched over by a hi-tech surveillance system of satellites and drones and protected by fences and warships. When EU policy plays to the image of a continent under siege, is it any wonder that there is widespread hostility to freedom of movement?

Neither side in the debate has been willing properly to consider the real issues at the heart of the Brexit debate. Remain campaigners have largely sidestepped concerns about democracy. And when they have addressed the question of immigration, it has largely been to accept the concerns of Leave campaign. Last week Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson led a chorus of senior Labour figures arguing for remaining in the EU, but also for restricting freedom of movement.

It is true that, in the slogan of the Remain camp, we are ‘Better Together’. But ‘Better Together’ does not mean supporting the institution of the EU. It means supporting the people of the EU – and beyond; supporting, for instance, the people of Greece against EU-enforced austerity, and of migrants against the imposition of Fortress Europe.

Leave supporters, on the other hand, have not so much addressed issues of democracy and immigration as exploited them in an opportunistic, and often reactionary, fashion. In reducing the problem of democracy to the bureaucratic structures of the EU, they have ignored the broader shifts in politics and the economy that have left large sections of the electorate feeling politically voiceless, and which will not be addressed simply by leaving the EU. In conflating democracy and national sovereignty, and promoting border controls as the key expression of sovereignty, they have advanced a narrow, divisive notion of democracy.

Many in the Remain camp insist that only by voting ‘Yes’ to the EU can we prevent the triumph of anti-immigration populists. Many Leave campaigners argue that only by quitting the EU can we truly challenge populist anti-immigrant sentiment. Neither is right. Support for populism is an expression of disaffection from political parties and institutions that feel remote and out of touch. Ignoring that disaffection in the name of staying in the EU will increase the sense of resentment about the liberal elite that fuels populism. But equally, given that restoring national sovereignty will not address the more profound political shifts that have led to people feeling politically abandoned and marginalized, nor taking control of borders challenge the reasons for wage restraint, or for the rise of zero hour contracts, or create new housing, or shorten NHS waiting times, neither will Brexit address people’s real grievances or dispel the disaffection that many sections of the electorate have with mainstream politics.

Whatever the result on Thursday, neither popular disaffection with mainstream political institutions, nor the sense among large sections of the electorate of being politically voiceless, is likely to subside. Nor will it until we begin to address directly the reasons for that disaffection.

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15 comments

Ademola Bello

Fantastic peice Kenan you articulated my feelings about this whole things so concisely. One thing, in the sentence here: “Britain would have control of its borders, and so be able to allay people’s about immigrants” I think you missed out the word fear.

Can I ask which way you are voting. I agree with you that the EU has no democratic mandate so it is basically a top down organisation that was bound to benefit some people. But it is an inherently volatile structure of rule, but I find myself fearing the terms of a leave vote, the people bolstered by such a vote are UKIP and the Conservative right. And leaving as you say will not really solve any of the issues framed as EU derived, people seem to be trying to fight globalisation. A fight which I doubt can be won. Is it a pipe dream to envision a pan European socially democratic uprising- something akin to what DIEM25 is looking for or should we focus on fixing the left on a national scale first

On the narrow question of what might benefit the right/populists, one could argue that it would be a Remain vote, because it would exacerbate the sense that people have of being politically ignored and voiceless. However, I don’t think the question ‘what would most help UKIP?’ is a useful starting point. It is because mainstream politicians are so narrowly focused on staunching the loss of votes to the populists that they often adopt the anti-immigration rhetoric of the populists. You are right that what’s missing are progressive social movements of sufficient strength that can shape people’s grievances and disaffection in a different direction. I have written before:

We need to establish new social mechanisms through which to link liberal ideas about immigration and individual rights with progressive economic arguments and a belief in the community and the collective. Those who today rightly bemoan the corrosion of collective movements and community organizations often also see the problem as too much immigration. Those who take a liberal view on immigration, and on other social issues, are often happy with a more individualized, atomized society. Until all three elements of a progressive outlook – a defence of immigration, freedom of movement and of individual rights, a challenge to austerity policies and the embrace of collective action – can be stitched together, and stitched into a social movement, then there will be no proper challenge to the populists.

On the vote: I don’t think either side in the Brexit debate have been willing properly to consider the real issues that need addressing, and it is the issues that, at heart, really matter. But I could not support an institution that is undemocratic and pursues policies that are regressive. So, if you were to push me, I would say ‘Leave’.

I couldn’t reply directly to your most recent comment so I’ll do it here: You given me a lot to consider. Do you give any weight to the idea that the EU can and could represent a forward March of progress, it is the largest and- I assume- most evolved experiment in intergovernmental cooperation. A vote to leave feels like a step in the wrong direction. Membership is precluded on candidate states guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, protection of minorities etc is this not an institution worth fighting for despite its flaws..

I am not sure that many members of the EU would not have been democracies, or not observed the rule of law without membership. On the other hand, I don’t view the EU’s treatment of Greece or of migrants and refugees as being ‘progressive’. I believe, as you do, in pan-European solidarity, but as, I observed in my article, the solidarity we needed to have shown in recent years has often been against the policies of the EU. It is true that had Britain or France, and any other major country, been outside the EU, it would probably have had as regressive an immigration or economic policy as the EU. But that is not an argument for the EU. What matters are tackling the deeper issues that have created grievance and disaffection, and which neither of the sides in the referendum have addressed. Those issues will still have to be tackled whichever way the vote goes, and that, in my view, is what we should focus on.

Out of interest, how would you recommend actually voting? Or would you prefer not to make a recommendation given the fact that neither option will tackle the underlying problems as you rightly suggest?

The missing element in the debate – is that no one has been prepared to address imperialism as the driver and root of the bundle of problems here … without the theory of crisis and the consequences of the resulting imperialism – the tasks that you hint at cannot be addressed that all sides express their responses to the issues posed in nationalistic terms means that migrants can only be defended by a thoroughgoing internationalism – and we need new organisations and renewed politics to do that – that much has been made clear.

Quite impossible until we ditch capitalism and replace it with a better free-market system; a co-operative system for example.

Capitalism is Hobbesian, the war of all against all, thus bound to result in classism and racism. The real racists aren’t the pitiful boot-boys on Deadend Street, they are the elite and MSM who keep the whole horrible system propped-up.

One hopeful thing is that most ordinary people in the West realise we must move beyond the Western-led (& dominated) world order that began with Vasco da Gama and Columbus – if only because we have no choice but to do so.

But this process hasn’t been helped by the fake-internationalism of the Elite and Affluent – who expansively welcome multi-racialism and multi-culturalism, while remaining determined to grind the faces of the Poor both at home and abroad.

Ademola expresses much of how I feel, great article Kenan, and I read you response to him, that you, when push come to shove, come down on the leave side. With me however, when push come to shove, I will go for remain. You mention this piece you wrote:

“Those who today rightly bemoan the corrosion of collective movements and community organizations often also see the problem as too much immigration. Those who take a liberal view on immigration, and on other social issues, are often happy with a more individualized, atomized society. Until all three elements of a progressive outlook – a defence of immigration, freedom of movement and of individual rights, a challenge to austerity policies and the embrace of collective action – can be stitched together, and stitched into a social movement, then there will be no proper challenge to the populists.”

I want all those three elements to come together in a progressive Europe. My faith may be foolish. I hope it isn’t.

I also have the same desire to create a progressive Europe, and I don’t view faith in such a project is foolish. But neither do I see that project as synonymous with the EU. Rather, I see it as having to be built from the bottom up, and often against the policies of the EU.

Such is the economic inequality between different parts of the world – and such the political tyranny or turbulence in many parts of it – that it’s difficult to see how Migration will cease to be a problem for Europe in the short-term. But in even the mid-term, Europe is heading into such decline (or turbulence) itself, that the problem will solve itself – Europe will cease to be an attractive destination for migrants.

The Vote is a choice between poisons – the swift one of hazards caused by Brexit or the slow, continuing poison of the EU.

What seems most certain is that the Referendum – called for the benefit of the leader of the Conservative Party, not for that of Britain or its people – has proved to be very damaging; bitter and woundingly divisive, setting two halves of the people against each other and mercilessly throwing into stark relief the fault-lines of British society. Worse, the wounds won’t suddenly heal on June 24, but may prove painful and long-lasting.

I have no idea what to vote, so I may not.
As for the campaigns though, I’m hugely turned off by the Remain side.
The new mayor of London took the biscuit last night – when he said the Leavers were running ”Operation Hate”. That’s it with him now as far as I’m concerned. He’s a wrecker of political debate.
And joins so many on the Remain side and liberal commentators more generally.
Everyone who has condemned the Ukip refugee poster is part of this problem too I think.
I just heard Alex Salmond joining in on that score too.
It’s racist apparently to highlight the failure of the EU in handling the migrant crisis last summer.
Because the refugee migrants were all non white people.
Everyone is at it. Even Michael Heseltine last night when he was on the radio with Farage.
What is and isn’t racist has to be defined better. Otherwise the word becomes meaningless.

The worst offender though, has to be James O’Brien on LBC radio. Outstandingly awful.

I think most people acknowledge the flaws of human politics but as of yet there has been no success in formulating a way in which to aggregate social differences (see arrow’s impossibility theorem). At present liberalism is competing with more communitarian positions. The uk leaving the eu has effectively isolated one of the more powerful liberal voices on the international stage and so now the eu has a chance to recalibrate itself to communitarian values which exist naturally for our continental neighbours.

I feel your despair and share it but I do not believe for one minute that the eco-modernism of the green party or the progressive left is the answer, mainly because its liberal underpinnings are fundamentally flawed because they rely on a competitive understanding of the world.

Ive been chatting with an international green socialist but again her ideological perspective is liberalism but liberalism has no way of managing life/death relationships. Only to try and fulfill all rights entitlements which completely ignores the life/death dynamic. Consequently she failed to answer any of my questions. You might find deep ecology a perspective to study for a while to better understand the negative paradoxes inherent in rights-based systems. For a short cut imagine every living organism has equal right entitlements. How do you manage the right to life. You will then see discrimination or class differentiations become a naturalised feature of our perceptions of the world. So the question becomes not how to do you ensure rights entitlement for all living organisms but how do you manage discrimination or perceptions of differentiation to ensure biodiversity and resilience.

If there are imperatives then
1. Human development/activities need to be differentiated between low/medium/high impact.
2. A metric needs to be established which identifies what exactly is a sustainable lifestyle considering the eu is operating at an overshoot of 2.6 planets.
3. How are resource flows to be managed so that these flows exist within ecological limits.
4. The type of fundamental reform we are promoting will only really be realised if we become politicians ourselves.